Could You Repeat That? CCVI

I did not travel as I'd intended this summer, nor did I do anything that would merit great acclaim. What did I do, instead? I read, friends. I read so many books.


Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky
It is the right and proper way of intelligence to be blown on the winds of subconscious whimsy. He does not need to know the deeper workings of his own mind, indeed he cannot, any more than he can know the precise positioning of his arms: the data is simply too complex to be consciously grasped.

The Ninth Metal, Benjamin Percy
"A steak knife magically flew across the street and into his parked SUV and hit him right in the heart. Weirdest thing, right?"

Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me, Aisha Harris
This moment gave me the kind of publicity many people dream of and spend an inordinate amount of time and effort attempting to manufacture; meanwhile, I just stumbled into this attention merely because I said I wanted Santa Claus to be a penguin.

Teach Me, Olivia Dade
Annette patted his hand, then removed hers. "Cause her pain, and we'll make quite certain you regret it."
"So much regret." Alfred offered him a genial smile. "The sort of regret that would cause a man to rethink all his critical life choices to that point."

Count Your Lucky Stars, Alexandria Bellefleur
"Livvy, relax. The doctor says I'm healthy as a horse."
She pursed her lips." Are we talking Seabiscuit, or the Red Pony?"

The Red Scholar's Wake, Aliette de Bodard
It was one thing to make the best of a bad situation--to be civil with pirates and try to build relationships even though all she could see, most days, was Ngà's pale face; it was quite another to boldly go kissing the leader of a pirate banner.

Shattered, Kevin Hearne
There is no way to perform Druidry without knowing how first. To even attempt it would be dangerous. I am beginning to think that much of what these people are doing in the name of convenience might be dangerous also. Magic does not happen free of cost.

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, KJ Charles
"Joss, he's a baronet. You can't tup a baronet."
"Someone's got to."

Hook, Line, and Sinker, Tessa Bailey
She pressed her lips into a line.
Fox narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you doing that thing with your mouth because you're trying to trap all the psychological terms you want to throw at me?"
Her expression turned miserable. "Yes."

Hugo Awards 2024

Hey-o, the Hugo Awards nominations came out on March 29, 2024. Which was earlier than I expected, but given the scandal of last year's awards, I imagine the procedures for this year's are SPOTLESS.

I totally forgot to become a member for this year's voting, which I only realized three days before ballots were due, so. I did not vote this year, and also did not get the handy voters' packet--which means I didn't get to read some stuff, alas!

In any case, as per usual, media I consumed before the nominations came out on March 29, 2024, are highlighted in blue and stuff I read afterwards is in green. (Purple are those I had already obtained but hadn't read yet.) I've ranked the media in the order I would have voted for them. I did not rank media I didn't consume, and I've included handy snippets from the stuff I did consume.

Since I'm posting this after the winners have been announced, I've opted to bold and underline the actual winners, while preserving how I chose to rank them.

Could You Repeat That? CCV

The Blood of Olympus, Rick Riordan
The twins locked eyes and had a silent argument. Apparently Artemis won. Apollo heaved a sigh and kicked his broken ukelele across the stage.

Something Fabulous, Alexis Hall
"I never said you were infirm. You're very firm. Almost...excessively firm, really."
"I understand you're trying to be reassuring, but stop it at once."

Trese, Volume 5: Midnight Tribunal, Budjette Tan & KaJo Baldisimo


Now & Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Meals + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers, Julia Turshen
It could be as simple as meatballs with spaghetti, with maybe a little garlicky toast to sop up the sauce or a tangle of peppery arugula to add something green and to balance the whole thing. Each of those things is made better by the relationship it has with its friends. By assembling all of them, the meatballs and the salad and so on, I'm not just making food. I'm making a meal with a clear point of view and a story.

Could You Repeat That? CCIV

Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins, x2
We manage the darkness as we did in the arena, wrapped in each other's arms guarding against dangers that can descend at any moment. Nothing else happens, but our arrangement quickly becomes a subject of gossip on the train.

Cackle, Rachel Harrison
I wonder how much of a woman's life is spent this way. Enduring. Waiting for enjoyment or, fuck it, death.

Bronze Drum, Phong Nguyen
It was unlike even the most powerful memento mori, when the certainty of death comes upon us like a cloud obscuring the sun. Life became weighted with numinous meaning, and that meaning, to last the rest of her days, was revenge.

Advika and the Hollywood Wives, Kirthana Ramisetti
"When nothing else in the world is predictable, you can anticipate when each story beat will happen. If you know what kind of movie you're watching, like a rom-com, you can almost time it to the minute. I like that. Nothing else in the world feels more comfortable to me than knowing the rhythms of a movie."

Heroine Worship, Sarah Kuhn
I should have grabbed something with less potential baggage attached, but I didn't actually own any other rings. Rings got in the way of punching things.

Oscars 2024 Nominations

Oscars time! And man oh man, I honestly owe the number of nominated films I've watched beforehand largely to my Cinemark Movie Club membership, because I have often watched one, if not two, movies per weekend. I've also become a devoted listener of The Big Picture podcast, which has nudged me towards films that weren't showing in theatres in my area yet. (I live SO CLOSE to Seattle, and yet am I willing to drive out there to see films that haven't gone into wide release yet? NOPE.)

As per usual, I have colored the names of films I watched before the nomination announcements on January 24 in green, and films I watched after the nominations in blue. Films I opted not to watch are struck through. (Sorry, Society of Snow, but I'mma skip the trauma and cannibalism.)

Also as per usual, I've re-ordered the films according to how I would rank them, and included clips that I felt were relevant. I opted to just not rank films that I didn't watch for whatever reason. And some of these categories were REALLY HARD, y'all. Just gorgeous stuff all around, I must say.

The 2024 Tournament of Books is Nigh

It's time for the 2024 Tournament of Books! In perhaps a surprising turn of events, I did not read ANY of the books on the shortlist before the shortlist was announced. Usually, by chance, I read a couple of the longlist books that make it to the next round, but not this time, I guess?



In any case, out of the eighteen books on the shortlist, I read all but one of them. (I skipped one due to content ooginess.) Listed below you'll find them in the order I read them; I haven't ranked them at all. I'm not sure how I would this time around? Rather than commentary, I've given you two pull quotes from each of the books I read.

They're all worth a read, though YMMV depending on your mood.

Media Consumed 2023

I really like the format I used for 2022, so I'm just gonna continue on with that for now.

250 Books | Six Cities Visited | 48 Comics | Four Concerts and the Like | Five Conferences and Festivals | 107 Movies | Four Museums and Landmarks | Twelve Readings and Talks | 0 Sports Matches | Six Theatre Productions | 848 TV Episodes

LET'S. EFFIN. GO.

Could You Repeat That? CCIII

So it turns out I haven't posted one of these since September. Whoops? This includes most of my Hugos reading, in fact, plus a bunch for the Tournament of Books.

Tess of the Road, Rachel Hartman
Tess clasped a hand to her heart (she felt it beating even through Florian's jacket) and wished with all her might. Not for the classical piratical standbys--vengeance, fame, or fortune--but that she might shed the past like a skin and walk on with nothing, empty and new.

Snacking Cakes, Yossy Arefi
Okay, okay, raisin haters--you win.

Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, Charlie Jane Anders
Rachel never told Yiwei she loves him before. Maybe she should have picked a more romantic setting, like a moonlit beach, instead of a mutilation cave.

Akata Woman, Nnedi Okorafor
"Seeing is not the same as caring," the magician replied. "You're American; you should understand that more than anyone."

Saga, Volume One, Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples, x2

Miscellaneous Movie Moments XCVI (September & October 2023)

August is traditionally the "we don't know where else to open these movies" dumping ground of studios, and November is the "last chance to get in the big awards nomination window" timeslot, so September and October are generally pretty chill. (Except for horror movies, but I do not watch horror movies, so.) I found myself a good batch to watch, though!

Showing Up | Bottoms | The In-Laws | A Haunting in Venice | The Creator | Dumb Money | Killers of the Flower Moon

Miscellaneous Movie Moments XCV (August 2023)

That's right, it's BARBENHEIMER time. Here are my quick reactions to the…*counts*...twelve films I watched in August.

Haunted Mansion (2023) | Spy Kids | Oppenheimer | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem | How to Blow Up a Pipeline | Blue Beetle | The Last Voyage of the Demeter | Meg 2: The Trench | Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story | Golda

Miscellaneous Movie Moments XCIV (July 2023)

Once again, I am way behind on my movie updates! I'm trying to catch up before the end of the year, so I won't be writing a ton about any of these. Expect a lot of GIFs, though!

July was a pretty busy month for me, between a conference and a family wedding, so I didn't see a TON. But among them were some good 'uns!



Past Lives | Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken | Joy Ride (2023) | Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning, Part One | Kung Fu Panda 2 | Kung Fu Panda 3

Hugos 2023 Voting!

It's Hugos time again! I became a Hugos voter a few years ago after the whole mess before they adjusted the nomination and voting process. It's actually super-easy to become a voting member--if you pay for your annual membership (it's been about $50-60), you get a packet of most of the books and stories that have been nominated (not all of them--providing copies for voters is not required of the nominees; publishers just happen to be quite generous most of the time). And then you get to vote!

There's also the associated possibility of actually, like ATTENDING Worldcon, but that's an additional cost I haven't taken on as yet. (But if they have it in Seattle in the near future, as some have suggested....)

As the host of Worldcon this year is in China--Chengdu, specifically--there have been some interesting hurdles that I won't really grumble about. It's worth noting, however, that because of the location, there was a slightly different body of voters/nominators than before. (Worldcon, in my recollection, has most often been hosted in English-dominant locations.) Which is neato, in that there are many more folks of Chinese nationality (not just descent, mind you--in recent years, the diversity of nominees has been markedly increasing) nominated. Between that AND a short window for nominees to provide materials (I think a couple of the zine/podcast nominees specifically noted in their packets they only had eleven days), that also meant not everyone was able to get their materials translated in time.

Or: There were several nominees who were only able to share their materials in Chinese and not any translations in English. (And, to be fair, vice versa: Several of the nominees who shared things in English only added apology notes.) Some nominees could only share part of their materials in both languages; some folks who shared translations confessed they had to rely on AI/machine-translation in order to get it done before their deadline. In those cases, you could almost feel the absence of nuance. (In the case of one short story, that's almost the point--in the Astounding category, Maijia Lu's story "Left" is specifically about how the pictographic basis of Chinese language means some elements of physics can be expressed more wholly than in phonetic-based scripts like English.)

I find this interesting and not irritating, though YE GODS, can you imagine how I feel, having multiple stories and books in my possession that I cannot read? My heart, she is breaking. But also, this is a cool problem to have, no? From my perspective, anyway.

Could You Repeat That? CCII

Sambal Shiok: The Malaysian Cookbook, Mandy Yin
Shark fin soup was always about the different flavours and textures, in particular the addition of a small final splash of black vinegar before tucking in. It was essentially luxury hot and sour soup!

How to Walk Away, Katherine Center
And voila! An internal motivation! Doing something that would make my parents happy or give Ian job fulfillment might blur my newly drawn lines, but there was nothing blurry about getting the fuck out of here.

Cook Like a Local, Chris Shepherd
Little-known fact: Hang out in a dive bar in Houston around midnight, and you might see a couple walk in with tamales, either on a tray or in a warming bag. They'll pass from guest to guest, uttering "Tamales? Tamales?" until they get a taker who will trade them six bucks for a dozen....Nobody really knows where they come from, and it's probably not something the health department has signed off on, but it's part of the fabric of the city, as normal as a hot dog cart on a New York City corner.

Yours Truly, Abby Jimemez
First of all, if you think for one second that I can be flipped with cupcakes and handwritten apology letters, then you are absolutely correct.

The Nordic Baking Book, Magnus Nilsson
If you are interested in baking pine bark bread, the first step is to chop down a pine tree in early spring.

And...

This is, by the way, normal procedure in Sweden. You are not given cake by your colleagues for your birthday, you instead give them cake. I think this is an expression of the collective Swedish passion for practical arrangement aimed at avoiding awkward situations. By bringing the cake yourself you always get your favourite cake on your birthday, and you collectively defuse any pressure for others to remember everyone's separate birthdays.

Miscellaneous Movie Moments XCIII (May & June 2023)

I love summer movie season. I love living ten minutes away from a movie theatre. What a time to be alive!

The Hating Game | Big George Foreman | Love Again | The Green Knight | Five Easy Pieces | Fast X | Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse | You Hurt My Feelings | The Flash | Transformers: Rise of the Beasts | The Little Mermaid (2023) | Elemental | Asteroid City | No Hard Feelings | Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Could You Repeat That? CCI

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka
All stories are recycled and all stories are unfair. Many get luck, and many get misery. Many are born to homes with books, many grow up in the swamps of war. In the end, all becomes dust. All stories conclude with a fade to black.

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, Alison Espach
"Tell me, exactly what you are thinking right now," Billy said. "Don't hesitate."
I was thinking that there was nothing better in this world than to discover someone who was weird in exactly the same way I was weird. To be weird and then loved for it.
"I'm thinking how strange it is that flies have to have sex in the air," I said.

Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet
In the dark, when nothing else was sure, the soaring tree sheltered you. Almost the only thing you had to see before you slept.
How you came not from a couple or a few but from infinity.
So you had no beginning. And you would never end.

The Violin Conspiracy, Brendan Nicholaus Slocumb
And finally--finally!--Tchaikovsky, of course. Let's be clear here: Ray may have looked like a Black American, but secretly--secretly!--he was Russian. Secretly he'd spent his life ladling borscht and nibbling pelmeni. Vodka, not blood, surged through his veins. He was melancholy because it was always winter in St. Petersburg, and jovial because Muscovites are a good-hearted people who love to laugh. He killed the Tchaikovsky. He left the Serenade melancoloique bawling its eyes out onstage. He bowed.

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, RF Kuang
He had a sudden, very clear vision of the tower in ruins. He wanted it to shatter. He wanted it to, for once, feel the pain that had made possible its rarefied existence. 'I want it to crumble.'
Victoire's throat pulsed, and he knew she was thinking of Anthony, of gunshots, of the wreckage of the Old Library. 'I want it to burn.'

Movie Moments XCII: Guardians of the Galaxy Edition (April/May 2023)

It's been a while since I've done a themed movie post, but with the last Guardians movie rolling in--or, at least, the last one helmed by James Gunn--I figured this would be worth doing. Hilariously, I dug into my old posts and discovered the vast discrepancies between how I used to do movie reviews (literally one-sentence random thoughts) and how I do them now (hefty TL;DR meditations on narrative). I'm trying to split the difference with this post, because I'm really tired, y'all.

Guardians of the Galaxy | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 | Avengers: Infinity War | Avengers: Endgame | Thor: Love and Thunder | The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Miscellaneous Movie Moments XCI (April 2023)

We've reached the time of year--long days and mild weather--when I will go see pretty much any film that's not a horror movie. I am largely omnivorous.



Although I've got to confess: I did not diligently take notes on the miscellaneous films I watched this month, so it's mostly bullet-ish points to go along with the usual GIFs.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves | A Thousand and One | Suzume | Air | Renfield | The Super Mario Bros. Movie | Chevalier | L'Avventura | Star Wars: Episode VI--Return of the Jedi | Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.

Miscellaneous Movie Moments XC (March 2023, Part Two)

Now that Oscar season is over, I felt it was time to go on an action movie spree! Also, my Spring break started. We've got five delightful (to me) films that are nonstop violence, LET'S GO.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves | Creed III | 65 | Shazam! Fury of the Gods | John Wick: Chapter 4

2023 Oscar Nominees

2023 Oscar Nominees Oscars season! I actually made a good dent on most of the films this year, though (as detailed below), I did not catch all of them. But still!



Movies I saw before the Oscar nominations announcement on January 24 are marked in green, and ones I saw after the announcements are marked in blue.

Movies of which I consider myself a conscientious objector are struck through. (No shade, Brendan Fraser and Hong Chau, I'm sure you were great, but nothing I've heard about The Whale makes it sound like anything I want to see. And while I'm sure Women Talking is good, not to mention Ana de Armas's work in Blonde, I try to avoid films that specifically focus on sexual assault.)

I've re-ordered the films according to how I would rank them, and included clips and pics where I felt they were relevant. I opted to just not rank films that I didn't watch for whatever reason.

Best Picture | Best Director | Best Actress | Best Actor | Best Supporting Actor | Best Supporting Actress | Best International Feature Film | Best Cinematography | Best Adapted Screenplay | Best Original Screenplay | Best Animated Feature | Best Visual Effects | Best Editing | Best Production Design | Best Makeup and Hairstyling | Best Costume Design | Best Sound | Best Documentary Feature | Best Documentary Short Subject | Best Live Action Short | Best Animated Short | Best Original Song | Best Original Score

Miscellaneous Movie Moments LXXXIX (February + Partial March 2023)

I didn't quite watch all of the Oscar films, but I made a decent dent! Plus the latest in MCU, of course.

Tár | Causeway | Aftersun | Marcel the Shell with Shoes On | Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Close | Empire of Light | Babylon | The Fabelmans | Puss in Boots: The Last Wish | Triangle of Sadness | The Sea Beast | Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris